It is now six months since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. The bloody offensive was meant to demonstrate US military might. It has revealed US weaknesses instead. This could not have come at a worse time for the US, which is facing a rising China, an intractable stand-off with Russia in Ukraine and increasing discontent within the ranks of its allies.
The attack on Iran was only the latest instalment of a decades-long campaign by the US and Israel to weaken, if not bring down, the Islamic Republic. The enmity has its roots in the challenge Iran represented to US imperialism in the Middle East following its 1979 revolution. That hostility has endured. As the US stumbled through defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s, Iran built a network of allies it called the “axis of resistance”. These included Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, loyal militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen, as well as a strong relationship with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The escalation of Israel’s wars in the region following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack inflicted serious damage on Iran’s regional alliance. Israel’s targeted assassinations of leaders and bombing raids, along with genocide, invasion and land grabs in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria rocked Iran’s allies. The fall of al-Assad in December 2024 took another piece out of Iran’s regional bloc. Repeated mass demonstrations and strikes in Iran itself further undermined the Tehran regime.
Israel determined that now was the time to finish off the regime. The Trump administration, despite ruling class reservations, agreed that a renewed war would weaken Iran. It also wanted to use what it expected would be a swift victory to impress upon Russia and China that the US was still top dog in the Middle East and to remind its allies of its role as the region’s security guarantor. US success in deposing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and installing in his place puppet Delcy Rodriguez in January filled them with confidence.
The US and Israel have succeeded in one regard. According to the US administration, they have wiped out Iran’s navy and air force along with missile and defence systems. The economic cost to Iran in destroyed infrastructure and damage to the oil industry stands in the tens of billions of dollars.
But in most other respects the US and Israel have failed. The US attack will not stop Iran’s progress to nuclear power; in fact, it will only make it more likely. Despite the killing of many top Iranian leaders, the regime has survived and dug in. There is no Delcy Rodriguez figure waiting to take over in Tehran. The war and intensified repression have driven the protest movement off the streets.
The US has failed to take control of Iranian oil. Quite the opposite. Iran has demonstrated its ability to weaponise the Strait of Hormuz, choking the world’s oil trade. It is unlikely now to cede this power. The Gulf states, which opposed the US-Israeli attack, are now facing the consequences. Oil prices have fluctuated but are now climbing once again, presenting fresh threats to the world economy.
The US and Israel may wield enormous firepower, but the war, coming on top of arms deliveries to Ukraine, is draining US missile and interceptor drone capacity. It is also drawing assets away from other potential theatres; the redeployment of the USS George Washington to the Middle East means the US no longer has an aircraft carrier in the Asia-Pacific for the first time since 1944.
The US may have built a substantial domestic oil industry in the last couple of decades, but its strategic oil reserves are now down to less than 300 million barrels, close to the minimum needed before storage facilities start to degrade.
The cost of the war is climbing. Taking into account not just the direct military outlays but also economic disruption, veteran care and lost stockpiles of missiles, the war is costing the US hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly approaching $1 trillion over time, contributing to the country’s spiralling national debt.
The attack on Iran was never popular among a US public wary of a repeat of the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq. Six months on, with victory nowhere in sight and gasoline and heating oil prices rising, public support has dropped further. Opponents of the war now outnumber supporters by 20 percentage points. And according to New York Times poll tracking, Trump’s disapproval rating has climbed to nearly 60 percent, among the highest recorded for a US president. November’s mid-term congressional elections are likely to bring home the damage to the Republicans.
On the other side of the ledger, Iran’s regional allies have been hit hard, but have not been incapacitated. Hezbollah has been pushed back in southern Lebanon but not disarmed despite commitments by the Lebanese government to do so. The Houthi rebel movement has suffered significant damage but is still threatening to block the Red Sea, the alternative maritime passage for Gulf oil.
Meanwhile, China, which is dependent on oil and gas imports, has so far gotten by relatively unscathed. It built the world’s largest oil reserves before the outbreak of war, diversified its oil sources, boosted domestic gas production and accelerated its transition from fossil fuels to renewables. With US armouries significantly depleted and the US navy diverted to the Gulf, China is better positioned to throw its weight around more in Asia.
All up, the US is in trouble in Iran. The US recognised its predicament in mid-June when it signed a 60-day memorandum of understanding that heavily favoured Tehran. Likely, this was to give the US time to re-equip and launch a fresh offensive. But the US faces no prospect of a quick victory. Military, financial and internal political considerations limit the US’s ability to ratchet up the war.
The US is now trying to squeeze Iran with still harsher economic sanctions. These, together with the bombing and the blockade of its oil exports, are having an effect. But Tehran will not easily succumb to pressure.
The prospect of ending the war without Iran being completely humiliated is enraging Israel, which has opposed any moves to scale back the offensive. It has done its best to provoke a wider war, advancing its bloody agenda on a range of other fronts. The Israeli military is entrenching itself in south Lebanon, building seven new bases and carving out dozens of kilometres of logistical roads. In Gaza, it has herded the Palestinian population into more brutal confinement, and its October 2025 “ceasefire” is a joke. Israel has killed 1,300 Palestinians since it began. The Netanyahu government is allowing Israeli “settlers” to grab more and more of the West Bank. And in Syria, it has now seized more territory in addition to the Golan Heights it seized in the 1967 war.
Israel has long proven an extension of US power in the Middle East. But the two are not the same thing. While their grand strategies broadly coincide, the war on Iran has exposed tactical differences that are straining relations.
More severe strains have opened up between the US and its other allies in the Middle East, which, as much as US aircraft carriers, are crucial to US power in the region. These allies include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Oman, which have been brought together under the US wing to oppose Iran and its allies.
The US has offered these states military protection and support for their autocratic rulers for decades, in return for which the US enjoys basing facilities, the free flow of oil and free rein for US business and security forces. The US project in recent years has been to draw these states into a common security pact with Israel, the Abraham Accords. Israeli atrocities in Gaza, by reinforcing popular hostility to the Zionist state in the Arab world, have frozen this gambit.
US failure to prevent Iran blockading the Strait of Hormuz and its inability to protect its allies from Iranian missiles have thrown relationships into further disarray. What point is a security pact if it doesn’t work when you need it most? Fearing yet more devastating Iranian attacks, they are demanding the US bring the conflict to an end.
These regional powers are now looking to form their own blocs and alliances independently of the US. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey recently signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which reflects a loss of trust in Washington and disrupts US attempts to normalise Saudi-Israel relations. The US is now even threatening to bomb Oman, its mediator with Iran for the past five years, because it fears a regional effort by Arab states to make peace with Iran. Much preferred by the US are the moves by the UAE and Israel to create a regional alliance to hem in Iran.
US failure in Iran is now causing serious concerns within the US ruling class. The Democrats are arguing that the war has weakened the US, strengthened Iran and given comfort to China and Russia. Foreign policy advisers in Washington are suggesting that the US is facing its own “Suez moment”—referring to the failed British-French-Israeli scheme in 1956 to take the Suez Canal from Egypt, which marked the sunset of the two great European empires. Another argues in the journal Foreign Affairs: “The American Middle East is finished”. The Iran war, according to Marc Lynch, a politics professor at George Washington University, is “the last gasp of a failed order”.
Such takes are common, even if overdone. The US empire is not about to fade into history like the British and French; the US remains the world’s biggest imperialist power. The signatories to the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement remain structurally integrated into US military plans.
Nonetheless, the US is certainly facing dwindling trust among its allies. The Trump administration has flipped the traditional maxim of politics—“Unite your allies and divide your enemies”—and sown doubts, disillusionment and even hostility in the ranks of US imperialist allies and recovery in the fortunes of its enemy. Canadian and European leaders are horrified by Trump’s tariffs, his threats to take over Greenland, his reduction of US troop numbers in Europe, his warm relations with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, his administration’s support for far-right parties and his emissaries’ insults directed at European leaders at security conferences.
Similar tensions are evident in US imperialist relationships in Asia, where Trump has just cut back joint military exercises with South Korea, stating that they are “totally inappropriate and hostile” to his friend North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump’s hot and cold relationship with Xi Jinping is also making the US’s allies nervous.
Fragmentation in the US-led imperialist alliance in Europe and Asia will make the world more dangerous. US allies in Europe and Asia are rapidly increasing their military spending, partly under pressure from the US, partly because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s growing ambitions, but partly because they anticipate they will no longer be able to rely on US protection. Without the US standing behind them, European and Asian governments will try to find substitutes for the US nuclear arsenal, which has protected them for decades. France and the UK have proposed a new nuclear umbrella for Europe, and there will be pressure on Germany, South Korea and Japan to become nuclear powers.
The shifting tectonic plates of world imperialism are throwing the world into chaos. The victims are not the politicians and generals. Whether in Asia, Europe, the Middle East or the Americas, the rearmament bill will land squarely on the shoulders of the working class, while the militarisation of civil society currently under way means more repression at home.
If the peoples of the world are to have a future worth living in, we need to smash the capitalist system that is driving us into this hellscape. Much as the ruling classes and their advisers focus on strains within military alliances, the main division in the world is not between nations but between the working class and capitalists of every country. The capitalists and their state apparatuses fight for supremacy but are united in their desire to exploit the working class. The working class has no interest in perpetuating the injustices of the system.
The main question will be who will triumph in this battle. The oil workers and dockworkers of the Middle East hold tremendous power in their hands. They too can seize control of the oil industry, not to blackmail workers elsewhere but to run this vital resource under popular control. But not just these workers. The masses in the Middle East can fight for their interests against a world racked by capitalist greed and imperialist wars. The 2011 Arab Spring, in which ordinary people rose up against their rulers across the region, pointed to a world of democracy and equality. They represented such a threat that they were brutally crushed by the region’s despots, backed by the US or Russia. Suppression of opposition has cast a prolonged chill over the region. But it won’t last forever.
